How I Saved $50,000+ So I Could Leave My 6 Figure Career

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How I Saved $50,000+ So I Could Leave My 6 Figure Career

How I Saved $50k so I Could Leave My Job & how you can save to leave your job too

When I was working for an employer earning 6 figures in my earn 20’s, life was great. I loved having financial abundance coming in, but I really thought about my life and I kept asking myself, “what do I really want?” At the time I was working away from home, I had to rent a place to stay at when I was working and I knew that the lifestyle I was bound to because of my work, was not what I wanted for the rest of my life, even though I enjoyed what I was doing and I loved the people that I worked with.

This made me realize that leaving my 6 figure income was what I needed to do and that I wanted to have my own business. This also meant, that I needed to do a really great job of managing my money when I was working, so I had a really good cushion so I could leave my 6 figure career, to go back to school, pay tuition and be able to have the funding to start my business when I come out of school (all while being debt free except for owning a home) and to not have to get a “job” to subsidize all of the costs to start a business.

So I knew that I was going to have to save thousands of dollars a month in order to make this big life transition. Here are some of the ways that I was able to save thousands a month, in order to leave my 6 figure income and take the big leap of faith.

#1 I Seen My Future Life Every Single Day

I saw the bigger picture every single day and I envisioned my future life. If I hadn’t of done this, I wouldn’t have stayed the course when something happened, when I felt emotional or when I felt impulsive.

You need to have a greater “why” for saving your money than just, wanting to save money or wanting to pay off your debt. That isn’t what is going to fuel you when you need it most. It has to be something so much deeper inside of you. For me, I wanted to feel more purposeful and fulfilled by helping people with something that I struggled with and overcame. I had a deep inner desire to help people who were suffering from a financially scarce mindset and it was causing anxiety that was stealing their energy, their health and their quality of life. I knew that I had to share my story so other people didn’t have to struggle for as long as I did.

#2 I Tracked My Spending

Everyone talks about budgets and how you need to stick to a budget. Yes, I agree, budgeting is super helpful. But what you have to do before you ever create a budget, is to track your spending. You need to know how much you are already spending a month and you need that reality and awareness in order to make changes. If you just create a budget and hope to stick to it, you are going to feel like you have failed because so many of the numbers aren’t going to match up.

Another reason why I preach tacking your spending is because you likely have costs that are coming out of your account every single month that you don’t even realize and you wouldn’t have included them in your budget, because you simply didn’t know. You may have charges that are small that are automatically coming out of your debit account or being put on your credit card and because they are small, you don’t even notice them. Let me tell you, those small expenses, add up big time!

Some of these small expenses may be monthly bank fees, e-transfer fees, ordering cheque fees, app fees, gym memberships that you no longer use, Amazon fees, or other fees that you thought you canceled but the service provider actually did not cancel.

#3 I Really Worked on Controlling My Emotions

When it comes to our emotions, we allow them to control our decisions and our spending habits, instead of making smart choices that weight the pros and cons of our decisions.

So often we allow our emotions to control us and we don’t even realize how it is impacting us. We allow emotions to overcome us and allow us to sit in certain states, that are not empowering for too long. We allow our emotions to get the best of us and affect our ability to make smart decisions.

We don’t just see the situation for what it is, learn the lesson that we were supposed to learn from it, use that lesson to help us to make smarter decisions in the future and then move on. Instead, we hold onto that forever and it holds us back.

Maybe you invested some money in something and you lost money, so now you are scared and skeptical of every type of investment because of that one time you lost money. So instead of going forward, you are only going to keep losing money because you are too afraid to make another mistake again, which also means that you are never going to win because you won’t put yourself out there.

People who are financially successful, have really good control over their emotions.

They actually detach their emotions from their money, which makes it so they can make really good decisions about it.

When your decisions are very emotionally based, it is dangerous because you are doing something to often, try and avoid feeling something. Most of the time when you are doing something because of emotions, it is often because of the emotion of fear.

You fear something, so you don’t do something even though, it’s what is going to move you further ahead.

You are scared of taking a reduction in your lifestyle because you don’t want to feel the pain of having your neighbors find out or have other people wonder why you aren’t able to keep playing at the same level that you were before.

When I knew that I was going to be leaving my 6 figure income, I knew that I couldn’t keep showing my horses. I knew that if I was going to be going back to school and I wanted to graduate debt free, that it just wasn’t going to work out to keep showing my horses and also not have an income. So I set my emotions aside, and I did what was right. I sold my horses to other people who could show them and take them to the level that they deserved. It also freed up a lot of monthly expenses that I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for.

Working on becoming more aware of your emotions and learning how to not allow your emotions to be what is driving your decisions, will be one of the best skills you can utilize in achieving what you want with your money.

Because when you operate from a place of emotional intelligence, you make decisions that align with what you want most and not just what is going to prevent you from feeling pain (which is what you fear, pain of some sort and growth can often come with growing pains). You align your actions with your bigger vision, the long term vision and not just what feels good right now, which is often what holds you back is just doing what feels good for the short term.

When we have awareness, we are able to take a step back from the situation. Analyze it and then make better decisions.

# 4 I Made It Automatic

The easier you make something, the more successful you are going to be at it.

You can get your employer to set it up so when you are paid by direct deposit, you can have a certain percentage come off of your paycheck and go into a separate fund. If you find that you have problems “paying yourself first” (putting money away for yourself, for savings, investing, etc) BEFORE you pay your bills and spend it, you can have a percentage of your income be automatically saved for you before you get paid. This makes it easier to “live with a lesser income,” which will help to control your spending habits because if you don’t have it and don’t see it, you won’t be spending it.

Some people are good at taking money off for themselves and putting it into a separate account as soon as they receive it and other are not. If you struggle with this, make it easy and have it done automatically for you. Having it automatic, makes it so you have fewer steps to do as well, so it is a win-win.

People who have it set up automatically to have money taken off of their paycheck, save far more than those who do not.

#5 I Planned Years in Advance

Even before I knew I would be leaving my 6 figure career, I knew that there was a chance that I would have some big life changes and that in order for big life changes to happen with as little stress as possible, having myself in a really good place financially, was what I needed to do.

So when I purchased my brand new vehicle, I really spent the time thinking about how much money I was going to pay up front and what my payment schedule was going to be. I purchased my vehicle, I paid it off within 2 years and I got it for 0% financing. Now you might say, wouldn’t it have been smarter to have paid it off over 4 or 5 years because you got 0% financing. Initially, that would look like a smarter idea, but like I said, I knew that if I had a big life change, that that vehicle payment for many more years to come, would have a great effect on my life. And it did, when I went back to school, I had already had my vehicle paid off which meant one less large monthly expense when I had no income. If I would have spread out my payments over 4-5 years to “take advantage of 0% financing,” then I would have ended up paying monthly for my vehicle in a time of my life, when I had zero in income.

This is why it is so important when making decisions, to make sure you take a big step back and look at the bigger picture. What do I want in my life? What do I want to do in years to come? Where do I want to be in 5 years from now? Because when you ask yourself those questions, the decisions that you end up making are often far different than the decisions you choose when you are just looking at what you want right now and what feels good now. If you want help planning your finances, you can read my article on How to Plan Your Finances for an Entire Year (in under a couple of hours).

Want to join a supportive group of women as you go through your money journey? Join my free women’s Facebook group Confident Everyday Money on Facebook to completely change your money situation so it is one you are proud of.